Mobile Browser Simulator

The Mobile Browser Simulator is a web application that helps you test mobile web applications without having to install device vendor native SDK.

Important: The Mobile Browser Simulator supports the following web browsers:

• Firefox version 3.6 and later.

• Chrome 17 and later.

• Safari 5 and later.

Use the Mobile Browser Simulator to preview MobileFirst applications on Android, iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry 6 and 7, BlackBerry 10, Windows Phone 8, and mobile web application environments.

Restriction: Mobile Browser Simulator is not deployed to the production console.

When you preview a MobileFirst application on an Android, iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry 6 and 7, BlackBerry 10, or Windows Phone 8 environment, only the devices for the created environments are available. For example, if you preview a MobileFirst application on an Android environment, we can select both from the list of available Android devices and from the device lists from any other environments that were added to the application. We can also use the Ripple emulator to simulate the WebWorks API in the BlackBerry application.

1. Use Chrome as the web browser, click Open Simple Preview in the simulator.

   A new tab opens in Chrome with the application loaded.

2. Open the Ripple emulator from this tab.

We can preview all environments from the application folder. Each environment-specific preview allows for the addition of devices from available environments.

In the Mobile Browser Simulator, we can test skins per device. Only the skins available for that platform are shown. We can save a file in Rich Page Editor and then instantly preview it by clicking Go/Refresh.

We can select the link icon on the device toolbar to debug an application in a separate, simple preview.

Whenever a new environment or skin is added to a MobileFirst app, we must restart the Mobile Browser Simulator from Eclipse. Only from the Eclipse Studio does the Run As > Preview command supports skin changes. The console preview does not support skin changes.

We can select the Quick Response (QR) code icon on the device toolbar to show a QR code specific to the environment URL. This QR code generator therefore allows for quick testing on a physical device.

The Mobile Browser Simulator contains a frame that emulates a target device. It shows what the page looks like inside the mobile device browser. We can switch the frame to emulate different screen resolutions and form factors, including BlackBerry 6 and 7, BlackBerry 10, Android, iPad, iPhone, and Windows Phone 8 mobile devices. We can also rotate the frame to mimic orientation change (portrait or landscape). We can add multiple devices to the frame to view the various displays simultaneously. If a device detection servlet is configured for the web project, the simulator emulates requests from different device-specific agents.

• Test mobile applications with the Mobile Browser Simulator
  Use the Mobile Browser Simulator to emulate various mobile devices and test the mobile applications without the need to install device vendor native SDK.

• Calibrating the Mobile Browser Simulator
  Since browsers cannot accurately paint physical dimensions, we must calibrate the Mobile Browser Simulator.

• Enable user agent switching
  Use the Mobile Browser Simulator to render the web applications on different mobile devices. To render the web applications with the appropriate style sheets and theme, we must enable user agent switching.

Parent topic: Develop user interface of hybrid applications